Tag Archives: Oregon

Hood River Hotel visitor learns of need to … hold onto her panties

10 Jul
Rachel Zimmerman at Hood River Hotel

Rachel Zimmerman was happy to be reunited with her missing panties.

On our way to work this morning, we noticed something on the sidewalk next to a car parked in front of the Hood River Hotel. On closer inspection, we discovered … OMG, it’s a pair of PANTIES!

Please tell us if your first thought wouldn’t have been, “How in the world did they get there?”

Being the civic-minded sorts that we are, we thought it might be nice to try finding their rightful owner. You know, a sort of latter-day Cinderella tale. The Prince takes the glass slipper (OK, panties) and tries to find the perfect fit. When he does, romance blossoms. Yada yada — not a likely scenario, right, given that we are talking about panties here.

A modern-day Cinderella, Rachel Zimmerman tries on the lost panties — and voila! They fit.

So we leave the panties where they lay. And a short time later, we’re sitting at our desk when, through the window, we notice two young women approach the car, notice the panties, and begin howling with laughter.We thought we’d share our own amusement with them. First thing one of them does is turn to us and say, “They’re MINE!”

More laughter ensues. Rachel Zimmerman lives in Kansas City, Mo. She and her sister, Erica Ashe of Brooklyn, N.Y., were on the third day of a 10-day trip through Oregon.

They had been hiking on the Eagle Creek Trail the day before and had a jumble of loose clothing in the car when they unloaded for the night at the Hood River Hotel.

When they began planning their trip, they knew only that they wanted mountains and hiking and gorgeous outdoor scenery. They looked at Switzerland. They selected Oregon.

“We love Hood River,” they said. “This is a great little town.”

It hadn’t been on their itinerary, until they crossed paths with a hiker on the Eagle Creek Trail, who suggested they try us out.

Rachel tried the panties on for fun — Yep, they fit — and off they went, in search of more paradise.

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Hood River Hotel hosts 1959 graduates of Klamath Union High School for 21st annual reunion

20 Jun

Members of the Nifty to be 50 friends club — Linda, Teresa Potterf, Stella, Jancy Potterf and Stephie — relax during the Second Annual Wine & Pear Festival at the Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum in Hood River.

First, it was so nifty to be 50 that the four friends from the Klamath Union High School class of 1959 decided to get together, celebrate, then do it again in five years.

Fat chance they’d wait that long. They had so much fun the first year, they decided to do it again the following year. And the next. And the next.

And that’s pretty much how it’s been for the last 22 years. During that period, they’ve missed only one annual reunion, in 2011.

This year, they found their way to Hood River, and stayed a week at the Hood River Hotel. Now in their third decade of reunions, the friends have adjusted the name they casually use to describe themselves. Nifty to be Fifty became Nifty to be Sixty became Nifty to be Seventy.

Whooping it up outside the Full Sail Brewing tasting room, from left, Linda Lee, Stephie Pickett, Stella Rose, Teresa Potterf and her friend Julie.

Jancy Potterf, who lives in Eugene and organizes most of the events, picked Hood River for this year’s visit.

“I usually organize them,” she says, “and we usually do them in the fall.”

Because they missed the fall 2011 reunion, Potterf and friends decided to move up the date for the 2012 get-together.

Joining Potterf were Linda Lee from Los Angeles; Teresa Potterf (Jancy’s daughter), Eugene; Stella Rose, Santa Barbara; and Stephie Pickett, Gig Harbor, Wash.

They get around. Past visits have included Lake Shasta (“But the private house boat was so big,” Potterf says, “we never left the dock.”), Black Butte near Sisters in central Oregon, Santa Barbara three times, Hawaii, Crater Lake, Arizona, Lake Tahoe, Orcus Island in Washington’s Puget Sound, Lake of the Woods, Manzanita, Yachats twice, Seaside, Applegate/Jacksonville, the Bohemia Mountains, and Sunriver.

Hood River was on the radar. Potterf and her husband visited two years ago, spent a night, rode the Mt. Hood Railroad up the valley toward Mt. Hood, vowed to return.

From May 16 to 22, she and her friends booked one of the hotel’s suites, so all could stay in the same space.

“We were especially fond of our room,” she says. “It felt like a little apartment.”

Well, it is, kind of. Room 206 has queen and a double bed, a queen sofa bed, and the option of adding a roll-away. It has two bathrooms, and a kitchenette. During their visit, they attended the 2012 Columbia Gorge Wine & Pear Fest, staged at the Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum. They also took a drive to the Tom McCall Preserve at Rowena, but didn’t have time to visit Maryhill Museum and Skamania Lodge.

She’s thinking they may have to come back to Hood River, to finish seeing what they missed.

“I helped your economy a lot,” Potterf says, with a laugh. “We ate at every place in town that we could. I got to know Maureen at Pacifica real well.”

She had high praise for several staff members at the Hood River Hotel. One, Whitney Munoz, joined the ladies to watch “American Idol” on the big-screen TV on our mezzanine level.

“Everyone was so nice to us,” Potterf says.

Glad to hear it, Jancy. We’ll have your room ready when you and your buddies return.

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Begin countdown to Rose Bowl repast: Ducks (we hope) munch Badgers

27 Dec

Ours is an historic hotel.

Some of us are  historic people.

Some of us historic people remember when there were, like, five bowl games, all on New Year’s Day. Cotton, Sugar, Orange, Rose and … well, maybe it was only four. Our memories are historic, remember.

It’s kind of nutty what has happened since the late 1950s. The last week of 2011 and the first few days of 2012 look like the opening weekend of college football season. Just a bunch of inter-league games, involving units with losing records, all wrapped up in ridiculous sponsorship bowls in third-tier cities. The Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl, anyone?

Ugh. For a laugh, take a tour of the lineup at ESPN.com.  From our perspective (residing in Oregon), the only one that matters is at 2 p.m. Jan 2, when the University of Oregon returns to the Rose Bowl in search of its first victory there since 1917. The University of Wisconsin Badgers bring the opposition.

If you’re looking to join a party, join us in our mezzanine where we’ve got a big screen TV, which will be tuned to the game. Our crew will be glad to bring you great snacks — Hoisin Chicken BBQ Drums? Yu-UM! – and cold brews.

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Have you heard about the corkscrew that traveled the world — and ended up in Paris?

1 Nov

Richard and Judy Ranson attempt the impossible on one of their travels.

Richard Ranson loved his Hood River Hotel commemorative corkscrew so much that he took it on a tour of the world.

Until the security agents in Paris (you know how tough they are) took it from him, so he wouldn’t inadvertently attempt to open a bag of peanuts with it.

After he returned to his home in Charlotte, N.C., he fired off an e-mail to the Hood River Hotel.

“I’m writing to ask if you still have these, and if so, would you send me another one?” Ranson wrote.

Well, sure, it’s on its way. End of story, right? Nope. We wanted to find out who this intrepid traveler was, and where he had dragged our promotional corkscrew.

You know the kind of corkscrew we’re discussing. It comes in two parts. The corkscrew shaft slips inside the handle. Pull it out, and the handle slips through a hole in the top of the shaft to give the operator some leverage.

Now 69, Ranson retired from a career in accounting and corporate finance 13 years ago. He and his wife, Judy, wanted to travel, and boy, have they — up to 21 weeks a year.

“We’ve been to 46 countries, and we’re not finished,” Ranson says.

“We were traveling to Oregon in the summer of 2007, and I saw that corkscrew in our room at the Hood River Hotel, so I asked the guy at the front desk if I could take it with me,” Ranson recalls. “He said, ‘Sure.’ Well, that corkscrew has been halfway around the world.”

Cuba, Spain and Egypt. Turkey and France.

“On our recent trip, I just forgot that it was in my dopp kit, and I had it in my carry-on luggage,” Ranson recalls. “They stopped me in the Paris airport and confiscated it.”

It wasn’t the first time airport security had pilfered serious weaponry from Ranson. “They took nail clippers from me one time,” he says. “The little file was ‘a sharp object.’ And I had them take a big tube of toothpaste another time.”

Yes, yes, it’s the three-ounce rule. But admit it: Haven’t you had a similarly absurd shake-down, thinking they’re protecting us from the inevitable moment when some idiot stands up in the aisle of plane and shouts: “Stand back, or I brush the pilot’s teeth, and it won’t be pretty!”

Richard and Judy Ranson ... thinking about using Hood River Hotel corkscrew.

Ranson is hard-pressed to say which destination he liked most. “We enjoyed the Columbia River Gorge very much,” he says. “We went up to Mt. Hood — we were there in August, and there were people skiing up there. That was lovely.”

He says India is the one place he would never visit again. He says it was dirty — too much cow manure everywhere — and he felt constantly at risk in whatever mode of transit they were using — plane, train, bus and automobile.

That said, India dished up a major Woo-hoo! moment for him

“I think the biggest ‘Wow!’ experience I ever had was when we went to the Taj Mahal in India,” he says. “I don’t care how many pictures you’ve seen, you come around this corner on a small street, and there it is – and it’s the the most gorgeous building I’ve ever seen.”

Still, as much as one might enjoy the trip, there’s no place like home.

“When we got back to Charlotte,” Ranson recalls, “I got down on the ground and kissed the floor.”

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Full Sail, other Oregon brewers rack up loot at GABF 2011

12 Oct

Congrats to our buddies at Full Sail Brewing, for coming home from the Great American Beer Festival with a silver medal for their Session Black American-style dark lager. It was the only medal for the Full Sail crew.

Overall, Oregon beers did pretty well. Deschutes Brewing in Bend captured three medals — a gold and two bronzes — and Rogue Ales captured a couple of golds. Silver Moon Brewing of Bend got a gold and a bronze, and Barley Brown’s Brew Pub of Baker City got a silver and a bronze.

Want to see the full list of Oregon winners? Follow this link and use the search tool to select 2011 and Oregon winners. Bottom line? We’ve got a whole load of great beers anywhere you turn in the Northwest, including ground zero (us).

Oh, did we mention that the Full Sail tasting room is just a short six-block walk from the front door of the Hood River Hotel? You can taste it now, can’t you?

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Whatta you mean, you can’t find good Gorge wines?

4 Oct

We occasionally will hear people cop the disparaging attitude that you can’t find good wines in the Gorge. Huh? Have they … LOOKED? We disagree, strongly, but maybe that’s because we’ve actually tasted Gorge wines, instead of assuming that they couldn’t possibly compare with something bearing the Napa-Sonoma-Mendocino-Willamette Valley-Walla Walla stamps. To the snobs, we say, Get over yourselves — and have a glass.

When guests ask us about wine tasting in the Gorge, we like to suggest approaching it as a wine grower would … as clusters. For starters, there’s the ground zero cluster. Hood River now has seven wine tasting rooms downtown. Within walking distance of the Hood River Hotel, BTW.

Across Oak Avenue lies the Quenett tasting room. Turn left at 2nd Street and go one block to The Pines 1852 tasting room. Turn right at 2nd and go one block to the Naked Winery Tasting room. Continue west on Oak half a block to the Cascade Cliffs tasting room. Another block brings you to the Cerulean tasting room. Two more blocks west and a block south bring you to the Stoltz tasting room. Head a block north and walk east through the Mt. Hood Railroad parking lot, and you reach the Springhouse Cellar tasting room.

Did we miss anyone? Yikes, they’re like mushrooms — popping up all over the place.

But we’re not done. Grab the car keys and head south — to the valley cluster. (This is where we stop including individual links; get the full list at the web site of the Columbia Gorge Wine Growers Association). It includes Cathedral Ridge on the west side of town, Phelps Creek farther west, Marchesi Vineyards a bit south, Pheasant Valley farther south, and Wy’east, Mt. Hood and Viento out along Oregon 35 toward the east side of the valley.

Head across the Columbia River into Washington, and you have a whole different scene. The Underwood Mountain cluster includes  AniChe, Ziegler and Gorge Crest. Head east and you first hit the Lyle cluster — a collaborative group that calls itself “the young guns of the old highway.” Yes, they’re young. Yes, they’re gunning for your tastebuds. They include James Mantone of Syncline, Luke Bradford of COR, Brian McCormick of Memaloose, and Alexis Pouillon of Domaine Pouillon. The Lyle area also includes the Bordeaux reds of Jacob Williams.

Jacob Williams is consolidating its facilities farther east, out near the Cascade Cliffs winery, and not quite as far out as Maryhill and Waving Tree.

That’s the list. Then you check out the wines. And the awards they’re winning. And what the stuff actually tastes like in the glass. And you wonder why anyone who purports to love wine wouldn’t just love living here, where the stuff is rockin’ the glass, brah. Just sayin’.

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Salving the wounds of not making the Top 25 Hotels list

28 Sep
Sun set at hood river, Columbia river
Image via Wikipedia

Awww, we didn’t make Sunset magazine’s list of the 25 best hotels in the west. Believe us, we would tell you about it if we did. So why are we telling you about it because we didn’t?

Because we’ve got better prices? Well, sure.

Because we’re in downtown Hood River — and none of the others are? Definitely a plus.

Because we’ve eschewed the chi-chi glitz for down-home comfort and great, friendly customer service? That would be another reason.

Heck, there was a hotel on that Sunset list that didn’t have a restaurant or a fitness center. We’ve got both. Both, we tell you, and hot running water.

And we’re walking distance from eight wine tasting rooms and two rivers — the Hood and the Columbia. No hotel on that Sunset list can offer that.

So, maybe we’re on their B list, but B’s will get you into college. We are what we are — and that’s just fine, thank you very much. Besides, nobody else can say they’re 26th, because we claimed it first. We’re 26th, we’re 26th … YES!

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Cross-country drive brings couple to Hood River wedding destination

14 Sep

Summer in Hood River is the season for … kiteboarding, windsurfing, biking, hiking, wine sipping, river rafting, fishing, photo taking, beer diving and, for many a happy couple, getting married.

Makes sense. Who wouldn’t want to start their married lives in one of the most beautiful settings on the planet?

Julie Tong and Stephen Lewis — now, happily married.

Consider, for example, Julie Tong and Stephen Lewis.

She grew up just outside Washington, D.C., and is a newly minted attorney. Stephen, an emergency room nurse, hails from North Powder, Ore., and a family that grows organic potatoes in Idaho — featured on the shelves at Whole Foods, and on the plates of the reception dinner prepared by Blossoms Catering, the Hood River Hotel’s sister biz.

To reach the wedding venue at the Mt. Hood Bed & Breakfast, Julie and Stephen and their two dogs hopped in a car and started driving west from their home in Baltimore, Md.. Five days later — one covering 800 miles — they arrived in a place that, based on their effusive comments, they might someday call home.

It’s bound to be a wedding with unintended memories — sometimes, the best kind. For one thing, their ceremony took place under a pall of smoke from the Dollar Lake Fire several miles south on the north flank of majestic Mt. Hood.

Oddly, their wedding photos will probably remind them of that, because the smoke made for a bright orange hue to the day’s fading light.

Another memory?

“I was stung by a yellow jacket as I was putting Stephen’s wedding band on his finger!” Julie says. “I couldn’t believe it.”

After the exchange of vows, friends got the sting under control.

Choosing Oregon as a wedding destination made all sorts of sense. “Stephen’s surviving grandmothers lived in Oregon and could not travel far,” Julie says. “Additionally, the majority of Stephen’s family is from Oregon and we have always felt a special connection to the state.”

Us, too. Because Julie and Stephen love being outdoors, they chose the Mt. Hood B&B at the foot of Oregon’s tallest mountain. Then they began a search for a caterer, and loved the combination of quality food and affordable pricing they found with Blossoms Catering.

“It was a dream working with Cathy, Chef Mark, Beth and their team,” Julie says. “They were energetic, creative, and willing to work with two picky, self-described foodies like us. Mt. Hood and the Hood River area will forever have a special place in our hearts.”

For us, being a part of such special events is one reason we all love working at the Hood River Hotel and Blossoms Catering. We wish Julie and Stephen an eventful — and happy — life together. Something tells us, we’ll see them again.

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